5 Local SEO Tips for Startups

Written by: Jason Bayless | December 31, 2016

With a lower cost than traditional advertising methods as well as its ability to reach a much larger audience, digital marketing strategies often play a key role in ensuring that new ventures and startups are able to promote themselves more effectively. Startups that fail to develop an effective marketing strategy or overlook the social media opportunities that are best suited to content-based promotional efforts could end up making a more costly misstep than they might realize. The following five tips can all be of benefit to small businesses that are seeking to optimize the effectiveness of their SEO efforts.

One: Developing a Marketing Plan

Having an advertising plan in place is a concern that too many new startups overlook. Crafting a strategy that provides a clear picture of how marketing efforts may benefit a business can provide new startups with a road map, one that they may be able to use in order to avoid the most common and costly mistakes. Plans that offer greater detail on promotional tools, marketing resources and advertising goals can also ensure that small businesses are able to better utilize their available resources or adjust their efforts and tactics in order to ensure superior results.

Two: Utilize Social Media Channels

While hosting a blog or posting a newsletter may be of benefit, social media sites and services are often the best place to focus when it comes to ensuring content-based marketing efforts are able to be as effective as possible. Not all social-media channels can provide the advertising opportunities that businesses are seeking. Finding a channel that is better suited to one type of customer, demographic or marketing method can make quite a difference in terms of ensuring marketing campaigns are met with greater success. Working alongside a professional in order to assess different channels and explore various options can prove quite helpful, especially for organizations that have limited experience dealing with promotional concerns.

Three: Setting Goals and Benchmarks

Effective marketing strategies can typically entail considerable amounts of time, effort and financial resources. Establishing set goals and detailing certain advertising benchmarks in advance can allow new startups to spend their resources in a more efficient manner. For instance, businesses may benefit by focusing on improving in-bound traffic until it reaches a certain level before shifting their efforts to improve conversation rates and overall sales revenue. Striving to achieve a specific goal is a great way to ensure that loss of focus, motivation and momentum are less likely to create problems in the days ahead.

Four: Seeking Professional Assistance

Lacking the staff needed to create an in-house marketing department is a common concern for many new ventures, startups and smaller businesses. Tasking existing professionals with the management and implementation of a promotional campaign can have many drawbacks that businesses would do well to consider. Dealing with a SEO firm, online marketer or other advertising professional is often the best way to approach the situation. Professional assistance can provide access to a wider range of tools and resources and ensure that businesses are able to benefit from the know-how, insight and experience that may be required in order to ensure that an effective advertising strategy is able to be created, implemented and maintained.

Five: Assess the Effectiveness of Online Promotional Efforts

One of the most serious mistakes new startups can make is failing to make alterations to their SEO strategy over time. Just because a promotional effort is able to produce results today does not always mean that it will continue to do so in the future. Different circumstances may call for very different promotional strategies and new startups would do well to assess the effectiveness of their marketing efforts from time to time. Issues like overlooking a potential opportunity, missing out on the latest range of advertising tools and resources or wasting money on marketing techniques that may no longer produce results can all greatly reduce the value and effectiveness of SEO and online marketing efforts.